How to Write a Sentence by Stanley Fish Read Free Book Online Page A

components in relationships of causality (one event or state is caused by another), temporality (events and states are prior or subsequent to one another), and precedence (events and states are arranged in hierarchies of importance). “It was the books I read in high school rather than those I was assigned in college that influenced the choices I find myself making today”—two actions, one of which is prior to the other and has more significant effects that continue into the present. Contrast that sentence with this one: “I read Hamlet , and the entire semester was a drag and I learned how to fly.” There might be some relationship between reading Hamlet , having a bad semester, and learning how to fly, but the sentence doesn’t specify it; rather it just reports these events in a loose sequence, like beads on a string, without pressuring the reader to order or arrange them. That is the additive style (in one of its tamer versions). Each style has its beauties and its uses, and each typically projects a distinctive personality with a distinctive way of looking at the world. By choosing one or the other (they can of course be mixed and matched), a writer conveys something even before anything substantive has been said.
    Suppose, for example, you want to communicate confidence in your assertions and suggest that no one could possibly be of any other opinion. You might write a subordinating sentence like the one that opens Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice :
    It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
    In this sentence the claim of general truth is explicitly announced in the first clause, and the status of what follows it is established before it appears. But even if the sentence read: “A single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife,” the effect would be achieved. The sentence would then divide in two, with “be”—a verb that declares something to be the case—as the hinge. The two clauses—“A man in possession of a good fortune” and “in want of a wife”—exhibit parallel structures: “a man in possession of ” and “in want of.” Possession of fortune is not enough; it must be completed, in the world and in the syntax, by the possession of a wife; “must be” does not invite dissent; it is the equivalent of “Who could think otherwise? Why else would a man have a fortune?” The relative brevity of the sentence is important in securing the effect; it suggests a portable truth that can be carried about and produced at any time. Sentences like this are rhythmic in feel and easy to remember; they can be delivered with a click and a snap. “A stitch in time saves nine.” “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” “Out of sight, out of mind.” “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”
    The terms for this kind of sentence are many: aphorism, proverb, adage, dictum, apothegm, sententia, maxim. The name is less important than the form, which is the pithy pronouncement of wisdom in a manner that does not invite disagreement. Austen’s sentence does not quite fit the pattern: it’s a bit too long, and because attention is called to the absoluteness of the claim, that claim is ever so lightly undermined; “must be” in combination with “truth universally acknowledged” is a little bit too insistent and allows us to suspect an author mocking her own absolute pronouncement. It may seem counterintuitive, but you’ll have a better chance of persuading readers that what you are about to say is universally acknowledged as a truth if you don’t actually use the phrase “It is a truth universally acknowledged.”
    Just as you can practice